Canadian website offers money for nothin'

Long-forgotten cash just a click away

Somewhere out there, the family of Robert Normon Hill should be cracking a bottle of pricey champagne and pouring over glossy vacation brochures.

If they only knew their departed Calgary relative’s secret, Mr. Hill would be the toast of the entire family as the source of a financial windfall worth $120,120.25.

For 14 years, the fortune tied to Hill’s estate has been sitting in Bank of Canada limbo, one of more than 938,000 dormant bank accounts abandoned by their owners — Hill’s cash being the largest stash left to languish in Calgary.

Hill, or someone acting on his behalf, last accessed the CIBC account at Calgary’s Banker’s Hall on Jan. 13, 1997, and since then the money has gathered nothing but dust and interest.

But as happy as some Hill descendent might be to discover the treasure left behind by their deceased kin, even 120 grand is barely a drop in the bucket.

In accounts dating as far back as 1900, Canadians and people using Canadian banks have walked away — or perhaps passed away — from more than $395 million.

Under Canadian law, banks are obliged to hang onto unused accounts for a decade before turning them over to the Bank of Canada.

The federal bank holds amounts over $1,000 for a century before it goes to the Receiver General of Canada, with lower amounts saved for 30 years.

The forgotten money isn’t new — but thanks to Halifax, Nova Scotia computer science student Stewart Rand, the ease of finding the lost funds certainly is.

“I did it partially for fun, but mainly because I was frustrated with the existing website,” said Rand.

Until Rand worked his magic, the Bank of Canada files were mired in too much information and too few ways to sort through it — only searches by name and province were available.

Rand asked the Bank of Canada for access to the data, and once granted he started to develop a website capable of searches by city, address, balance, year and bank.

The result, www.lostcash.ca, makes for a fascinating treasure hunt — not only when it comes to your own name, but when it comes to seeing the money left behind by others.

You can’t help but wonder who Louise Anne Allore was, or why the Calgarian left $38,165.30 in an Edmonton bank account last accessed in 1997.

Why did American Homer L. Washington transfer a large sum of money from Cleveland, Ohio, to Canada in 1910, now worth $1,661.42 — or the equivalent of $350,000 in Washington’s day?

Other questions are more bothersome than fascinating.

For some reason, even as your taxes go up, the City of Calgary has $5,500 sitting in purgatory, after someone made a mystery deposit in Granville, Vancouver back in 2000.

And the mind boggles to consider what could have caused Aaron and Arnold Felicia to abandon $620,000 in a Toronto bank 11 years ago, along with a separate million dollars left behind in other accounts by Aaron.

Of course, even as perfectly good money goes unused, most Canadians won’t see a cent — including the man who launched the lostcash.ca website last week.

“There wasn’t anything for me on there — not a thing,” said Rand.

“But there were two or three family members I found money for — there’s $13 going to my grandfather, and twenty bucks going to my aunt.”